5/5
Serenity was the continuation of the cancelled series FireFly. I saw this in the cinema when it came out and it blew me away, it was the best film I had watched that year, and one of the best in my life - and it still is. At this time I hadn’t even seen FireFly and the film was still amazing. As soon as I could after I saw it I got FireFly and watched it, finally realising some of the jokes i’d missed in the film.
The story in Serenity is quite amazing. There is no clear good or evil sides, it follows the story of a band of fugitives just trying to make their way in a dangerous universe. Most people can relate somehow to this, okay so we won’t be flying around in space and we may not be fugitives, but most people are just trying to make their way in life by doing what has to be done.
The film is about this group of fugitives who will do any job - legal or illegal - just to put food on the table. In the crew are a doctor (Simon) and his sister (River) who are on the run from the government as River was a government experiment who can read minds amoung other things. During the film river shows the crew a past memory (which isn’t hers) of a planet far away. As it turns out the planet was created by the government and they put a chemical into the air to weed out aggression, instead people stopped doing anything and died, apart from 10% of them, who went insane and started eating people (this 10% are called reavers). In the end the crew have to spread the word that the goverment is responsable for these reavers but run into a few problems along the way.
Although the film has a serious storyline, it does have it’s humour, every so often there are jokes tossed about between the crew, which all adds to the characterisation which is possibly the best i’ve ever seen, I really cared about the characters in that film, even the ship (yes, I consider the ship to be a character).
There is a side love story in the film too (every good film has to have one), between the ship captain (Mal) and a companion (Inara), and also between the doctor (Simon) and the engineer (Kaylee). Both of these love stories follow on from the series and will make more sense if you have watched FireFly before the film.
There are rumours of a sequal because the dvd sales have made them so much money. A recent interview with the actor who plays Walsh told us all this:
“Everybody in the Firefly crew – and that includes the ones who died in the movie – are excited about the prospect of doing another,” he added.
So if there is a sequal, I will hopefully be there on the opening showing over here.
To conclude Serenity is a must watch film for anyone, even if you arn’t into sci-fi movies. If you havn’t seen it then I for one would recomend it, although you might want to watch the FireFly series before-hand so you will understand it much better.
